Tag Archives: Books

I just finished Cathy glass’s new book girl alone. It was an amazing and gripping read, as are all of Cathys books. This book told Joss’s story. Joss came to live with Cathy at age 13. 4 years previous her dad had committed suicide. Joss and her mother had come home and found his lifeless body hanging in their garage. Joss as you can imagine had not dealt with this and as a result was doing lots of unsafe things, such as drinking and smoking canibas. Her mother Linda has since remarried, and Joss did not get along with her stepfather Eric and there had been lots of arguments at home resulting in Joss being taken into care. In the beginning when Joss comes to Cathy she has attitude, and continues to act out and do unsafe things. Cathy regularly tries to talk to her to make her see sense but it does no good. A contract of behaviour is drawn up but it is very lax and Joss is allowed to stay out late which Cathy doesnt agree with. However her social worker is young and naive and tries to be Joss’s friend, rather than her social worker. Joss hangs around with older girls, and doesnt do her school work so is behind at school. Then the school inform Cathy that Joss is being collected in a car by two older men. We come to find out the men are Zack, her friend Chelseas uncle, and Carl his friend. Joss lies to Cathy a lot and Cathy begins to wonder if she’ll ever be able to get through to her. Then an incident happens where Cathy goes to Chelseas flat and finds a party going on, lots of young teens smoking and drinking and when she goes upstairs to find Joss she finds her with Chelsea and Chelseas father in the bedroom. After Cathy takes Joss home and tries to talk to her but Joss becomes hostile and tells Cathy she is ruining her life. A week later Joss goes out for an evening and comes home and discloses to Cathy that Zack has raped her. A police investigation ensues. Then Joss makes more disclosures, this time about Eric her moms husband and her stepfather. She tells Cathy that Eric has sexually abused her. At first her mom doesnt believe Joss and sides with Eric. Eventually Joss’s social worker goes to visit her mom and brother Kevin and Kevin is interviewed and he also discloses abuse by ERic. So the social workers say that Kevin has to come in to foster care. However before he does Linda their mother runs away with him and ends up at her parents house. She is distraught and very upset. She tells her parents that she’s left Eric because she realises now that he did abuse her kids, something Kevin told her led her to finally believe him and Joss. Linda becomes very depressed and Joss and Cathy are afraid she is going to kill herself too like her husband. Joss’s grandparents fight for kevin and Joss to live with them permanently and Kevin does, but Joss stays with Cathy and sees her family at weekends. After a couple months of this arrangement her grandparents threaten social services with court action if they dont make a decision so it is decided that Joss and Kevin can live with their grandparents full time. Joss, Kevin and their mom live with their grandparents for another year after Joss eventually moves back to live there. Eventually after a year linda is deamed well enough to parent her children again. The book was shocking in so many places. Its heartbreaking in other parts, it is deeply moving and a testiment to the resilience and determination of children who have survived awful tragedies. After disclosing the abuse joss’s behaviour drastically improves, she’s like a totally different child. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in fostering, social work, or any abuse survivor. You wont be able to put it down.

Reading inspirational stories. Stories about kids who’ve overcome the odds, or anyone really, whose story is inspiring. I also like reading about animals especially dogs, rescue animals, and working dogs. I also love collecting quotes and reading nice poems.

So I just finished another great book by Cathy Glass. Its called the girl in the mirror. This is a novel, not a foster care memoir. It was interesting to read a novel of Cathys. I must say I didn’t find the novel as good as all of her foster care memoirs, but I did like it and I would still recommend it. The book went a little bit more slowly though and I did not find it to be a page turner.

The book is about Mandy, a 20 something who is an artist. She’s taken a career break for a year to paint more, but she seems to be having trouble painting anything. At the beginning of the book her grandpa falls ill, and her father asks her if she wants to go visit him. She goes, and ends up staying to nurse him. He’s staying with her aunt and uncle, whom she used to visit as a child regularly, but 10 years ago her parents stopped her from visiting and she doesn’t remember why. When she arrives at the house she starts having flashbacks, weird thoughts, images, etc. She cant figure out why she’s having the memories. A lot of the book focuses on her sick grandpa, and towards the end he dies, but the majority of the chapters focus on him, his illness, and on the care he is receiving from the family. In the end Mandy does remember, and when she does, she remembers vividly. She remembers being almost raped, and she thinks its her uncle that raped her. But it wasn’t, it was his brother. Before she remembers, she asks her gran, and the local shopkeeper to tell her why it is her parents and aunt and uncle stopped talking, and why it was her visits to them stopped when she was 13. But they keep telling her she’ll have to ask her father. After she remembers, she becomes very depressed, and after that, she decides to confront her uncles brother, her abuser. She searches him out, and then goes to visit him. But it turns out he’s dead. It turns out he abused not only her but his own daughter, and another friend of his daughters too. Mandy is really upset to find this out. In the end of the book she moves in with her boyfriend, whose name is Adam, and tells him of what happened to her as a child. All through the story she has mixed up feelings about touch, about adam, and she keeps giving him the cold shoulder. But he stays with her and when she tells him he’s shocked and saddened.

I did like the book despite the slowness of it. It didn’t build until near the middle of the story. But I still think it was good, I’d still recommend it to people. I do think though that Cathy is best writing memoirs and not as good at writing novels.

So the weekend was pretty good. I had a relaxing one. The one thing I did do was go to my cousins 18th birthday party yesterday. It was a meal for some of the family, and then we had drinks too after the meal. We had a great day and I really enjoyed myself. It was nice after a busy week to just be able to relax. I also caught up on sleep on Saturday night. I went to bed really early and was reading my book, fell asleep in the middle of a chapter, and slept for 13 hours straight! No kidding. Speaking of books, I’ve finished the girl in the mirror by Cathy glass. I’ll do a review later today. It was a pretty good book I thought. Tonight I’m going to start girl alone, her new book that just came out last week. I stayed at mom and dads on both Saturday and last night. I always stay on Saturday night but I just decided that it would be better if I stayed last night too since we were going to that party. I am happy the weekend was relaxing, it sets me up for a good week ahead.

Recently I read my dads a policeman. Its by Cathy Glass. Its a short read at only 100 pages. Its Cathy Glass’s first short story.
The story is based on a true story. It centres around Ryan, who is a 12 year old boy. His mom is an alcoholic and because of her drinking Ryan and his little brother Tommy are taken into care. Ryan doesnt want to go into care. When his social worker Duffy talks to him about it, he becomes agitated and very angry and ends up punching her in the face. Ryan is in trouble a lot because of his temper, also, even though he’s never seen his real dad, he wants to believe his dads a policeman, and he tells everyone this, even duffy his social worker. Duffy wants to split him and Tommy up and Ryan wants them to stay together. However that doesnt happen when they’re taken into foster care. So Ryan decides to run away from his foster hom and go home. He also wants to rescue Tommy. He runs away when his foster mom is sleeping. He finds his way home to his moms house, but then his foster mom finds him gone and calls the police. They come to his mothers house and try to get him to go with him, however he again runs away, and this time, they dont catch him. He ends up calling his best friend and spending the night in his house. His best friends dad is abusive and beats up and verbally abuses his kids. After spending the night with his best friend, Ryan tries to rescue Tommy, however Tommy wont go with him, he’s happy with his new foster carers. Ryan hangs around the town all day and then tries to go back to his friends house for a shower and to charge his phone. It is then that he sees the dad beating up his best friend. Eventually Ryan goes back to his moms and his mom talks to him and pleads with him to go back to his foster mom and dad, so she can go into rehab and get better. The book ends with her going into rehab, with Ryan going back to his foster mom and dad, and Tommy ends up coming to live with Ryan and his foster family. Ryans best friend ends up also going into care. At the end of the book Ryan finds out that his foster dad is a policeman, so it turns out that in the end, his dad is a policeman.
Its a great short read. I highly recommend it to everyone.